Former US Secretary of State and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has prompted a public uproar over her latest quip aimed at President Donald Trump over the situation regarding the coronavirus pandemic.
On Friday, she shared a report from The New York Times about the US now leading the world in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, tweeting, "he did promise ‘America First’".
She was apparently referring to a slogan that is often chanted at Trump rallies and which was part of his election promise ahead of the 2016 presidential polls.
Most netizens immediately pointed the finger at the former First Lady for being “truly awful” and making “inappropriate” remarks.
They included China analyst Jack Posobiec, who noted that “Hillary Clinton is dunking on dying New Yorkers”.
He was echoed by Kyle Kashuv, an American activist and survivor of the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, who tweeted, “Wow. Gleefully boasting thousands dead, families broken, millions of unemployed claims, and widespread suffering just to own Drumpf. My god. This is despicable”.
Some, however, supported Hillary Clinton, with one user claiming that “if she were president, we wouldn’t be in this death trap”.
Their remarks come after The New York Times reported on Thursday that with at least 81,321 confirmed cases, the US had become the country hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, overtaking China and Italy.
Trump, for his part, insisted during the Thursday news briefing that the situation is “a tribute to the amount of testing that we're doing” and that "you don't know what the numbers are in China”.
He went even further by saying that the American people “have to go back to work, our country has to go back, our country is based on that and I think it's going to happen pretty quickly”.